Motion(Laws of Physics #1)(24)
He was probably laughing at me.
A lump formed in my throat.
So what if he was laughing at me? So what? Technically, he was laughing at Lisa. But that didn’t make me feel better, either. I didn’t want anyone laughing at my sister—unless she’s been selling cocaine to sixteen-year-olds. Then all bets are off!
“Whatever,” I said, glaring at him, trying to find fault with his maddeningly attractive face.
“I insist. I will prove it.” He didn’t see my glare, he was too busy pulling out his phone and swiping his thumb over the number keys to unlock it.
“Your source better not be Wikipedia. I don’t trust crowd-sourced data. You could have created the page and edited it.” These words came out more hostile than I’d intended. I told myself to relax.
“Fine.” He peered at me, big fat grin on his face, eyebrow raised in a challenge, looking arrogant and tremendously attractive and standing too close. “What do you trust?”
“Peer-reviewed publications,” I whisper-croaked, dropping my gaze to the glass case on my left and giving him just my profile.
Why couldn’t he just pick up his guitar so we could leave? And why was my throat so tight?
His eyes were on me, I felt them. Mine were studiously focused on the glass case, but I wasn’t looking within. A few seconds ticked by, during which I meditated on slowing my breathing and concentrated on pretending he wasn’t there, pushing his presence and the echoes of his laughter aside.
Swallowing against the tightness, I ventured to my happiest place, picturing the concave dome of a planetarium above me, a blanket of deceptive white dots overhead, planets and galaxies and solar systems masquerading as stars. And between the white dots? Black matter. What we could not see, what we did not yet understand.
The universe—in all its infinite complexity and beauty—struck me as an apt reverse allegory for human interaction. We are deceived by the white dots. We label them stars. Often, they’re so much more. Layered. Complex. Important. Surprising. Beautiful.
This was, I found, the opposite of people. In both cases, we label stars based on first impressions. The universe never disappoints or fails to inspire wonder, but people usually do.
Or maybe—maybe it wasn’t a reverse allegory. Maybe it was exactly correct. After all, the brightest object in earth’s night sky was usually our little moon. Whereas the majority of the dim, twinkling lights in the distance, the ones we barely noticed, were not only stars but something altogether more awe-inspiring once you took the time to investigate. To know.
“Hey.”
The softly spoken word pulled me out of my reflections and I glanced at Abram. He was standing close, like before. His face was still unreasonably handsome, his scent still captivating, and his eyes appeared warm and interested. He was no longer (outwardly) laughing at me.
“Pardon? Did you say something?” I felt none of the earlier chaos or discomfort. Both had been replaced with cool dispassion. Abram is a moon, most people are.
His eyebrows pulled together as his attention flickered over me. “Are you okay?”
“Fine. You?”
He blinked, like I’d blown dust in his eyes, and he seemed to rock back on his heels. Abram’s lips parted, perhaps intending to speak. But then he snapped his mouth shut, frowning like I’d done or said something to confuse him.
Giving him one more cursory glance, I twisted at the waist and called to the man in the corner, “This is Abram. He’s here for a bass guitar. I believe you’re holding it for him?”
*
As soon as we returned, I left Abram in the entranceway and reclaimed my seat in the mudroom by the back door. Picking up my book, I opened to the bookmark and stared at the words. I did not read them. My earlier cool dispassion hadn’t lasted long. During the silent march home, I’d felt increasingly . . .
Hot. And aggravated. A vicious recursive loop of being aggravated at being hot and getting hotter by being aggravated.
Huffing, I set my book down once more and left the reading cubby, heading for the kitchen stairs and Lisa’s room. I needed to cool down while also blowing off steam.
Conclusion: Swimming.
Opening and closing Lisa’s drawers, I searched for a bathing suit. My choices were slim, literally. She owned nothing but string bikinis. Huffing again, I selected a plain white one with the tags still on. If I was going to put on a string bikini, I might as well use one my sister had never worn. Undressing, dressing, and then covering myself in her oversized terry cloth bathrobe, I made my way to the back-garden pool.
We didn’t have a huge backyard, but the fact that we had one at all in this neighborhood was remarkable. My parents had bought a dilapidated brownstone on one side of theirs and torn it down, cleverly keeping the tall cast iron fence and the fa?ade facing the street. From the sidewalk, one would never know a garden, a small shed, and a pool lay behind the wall instead of a house. The garden had been specifically designed to provide coverage and privacy from the neighbors while also allowing areas of sunshine for afternoon sunbathing.
Since it was just past three in the afternoon, the pool and its perimeter were dotted with sunlight peeking through the trees. That was fine. I’d never been a fan of spotlights.
Discarding the bathrobe, I walked to the water’s edge and incidentally into a swath of sunlight, but then hesitated.